The sleepover is coming to an end. Sirius knows this is the point where she’s supposed to thank the Lupins for having her -- or, as her mother would put it, for graciously enduring her presence. But she’s not ready yet; she doesn’t want to draw attention to the fact that she doesn’t belong here, because that would break the spell.
At nine, Sirius has realised her family isn’t like others. She’s learnt by now that coming to school in long sleeves isn’t an everyday occurrence for the other students, and that normal parents don’t make their children lie for them when the CPS worker comes around for the fourth time that month.
So she studies Remus’s family with a kind of reverence, sitting on their cushioned sofa and watching as Mr Lupin dances with his wife to tinny jazz blooming from the radio while Remus rolls her eyes. She smiles when Mrs Lupin stoops through the door to Remus’s attic bedroom, where they hole up and listen to old records for hours, and sets down fruit platters or freshly baked cookies. She beams when Mr Lupin tousles first Remus’s hair, then her own, and when Mrs Lupin calls them her girls while talking to strangers in the grocery store.
As much as she has assimilated into their household, though, moments like these are a crushing reminder that she’s an imposter in the love and warmth of their home; that she has another house, another life, in which there is none of the laughter and only empty eyes and cool reprimands.
She steels herself at the sound of her mother’s car honking just outside the door and hugs Remus goodbye. Her eyes meet Mrs Lupin’s over her shoulder, and something unspoken passes between them. It feels like a promise, but of what, Sirius isn’t sure.
*
Sirius’s reluctance to leave when she comes over has not escaped Hope Lupin’s notice. Neither have the bruises that peek out from the edges of her uniform of jumpers and no doubt bloom up and down her limbs.
“Surely not,” Lyall had protested when she first brought it up. The two of them were on the verge of sleep, and Remus and Sirius’s murmurs floated down, barely audible, from the attic room above. “She’s just a child! They’re the Blacks, for Christ’s sake.”
But her husband is far less observant, comes from the kind of home where love was a guarantee, not a transaction. Hope had to work for every ounce of her parents’ approval, measured and calculated like a business’s profits. And even she cannot fathom what Sirius has endured: she marvels at the fact that she has not shattered under the weight of her family’s fists and expectations.
She has tried to do something – she diligently fills out reports to protective services every time she notices fresh marks (which is every time Sirius is over, without fail) – but the Blacks are the most influential family in the city, old money aristocrats, and she is beginning to feel as though she is shouting into the void.
Instead, she offers Sirius her heart, bleeding and fissured in her palm, but she can’t give her refuge, and she cries every time Sirius leaves. Lyall is reticent; anxious but unwilling to step foot in the cesspit of another family’s politics. “You’re part of the problem, don’t you see?” Hope spits at him in her fear on more than one occasion, and in answer he squeezes her hand tighter and makes sure he hugs Sirius longer next time she returns.
*
The year Sirius turns twelve is the year Remus is diagnosed. She’s never heard of leukaemia before, but she knows what comes with cancer, and she is sick on her bed every day for a week. Her mother hits her for soiling the sheets.
Remus is brave, as always, not flinching even when they draw what seems like litres of blood. Mr Lupin holds Remus’s hand in one of his big ones and Sirius’s in the other. She can hear Mrs Lupin crying quietly in the hospital bathroom.
Sirius visits as often as she is allowed, but even then, it’s not nearly often enough to satiate her desperate need for updates. Invariably, when she gets there, she finds herself searching for proof that Remus is getting better in the width of her tired smile. She sometimes doesn’t see her for weeks at a time, Remus sequestered in the hospital and Sirius in her oppressive bedroom. She calls whenever her parents are out, though, and without fail she ends up sobbing into her fist afterward. Remus is cheerful, and rambles about the nurses and the new lunch menu and everything but her cancer, but Sirius can hear her exhaustion through the phone’s tinny receiver.
The year Sirius turns twelve is also the year she begins to openly defy her parents. At first, she is met with equal resistance: when she talks back to her mother, she ends up in a hospital bed the wing over from Remus. Walburga easily sweet talks the nurse into believing Sirius really did trip over and manage to crack two ribs; she flashes the diamonds on her neck and throws around the names of her more prestigious associates and the nurse is practically kissing her feet. The upside is Sirius can sneak out when her mother isn’t visiting (which she rarely does) to see Remus. She’s startled, at first, by how small her best friend has become in the month or so she hasn’t seen her -- she seems to have crumpled in on herself. Remus’s parents rotate so that one of them constantly keeps vigil at their daughter’s bedside, and it’s Mrs Lupin who’s there when Sirius walks in.
Their faces burst into identical creased smiles when they see her, and Sirius is suddenly overwhelmed. She feels tears pricking at her eyes and hot in her throat and she stares at the floor, embarrassed at her cowardice when Remus sits there smiling bravely in the midst of a sea of tubes and beeping medical equipment.
When Mrs Lupin rises and envelops her in her soft arms, though, Sirius smells home and this time she can’t stop herself from bursting into racking sobs, the kind that make your nose run and your whole body ache. “Oh, Sirius,” she says – and it feels like something in Sirius’s chest is being pulled free – “we’ve missed you.” She can feel Mrs Lupin’s shoulders shaking too, and she’s incredulous at the fact that somebody cares about her this much.
“Hello?” Remus ventures. “Last time I checked I was the invalid here.”
They look back at her and she’s grinning. Sirius sniffles, and grins back, settling beside her on the bed and grabbing her hand.
*
Sirius is fifteen when Remus is discharged for good. They throw a party, Mr Lupin and Sirius, cheering as Mrs Lupin’s car pulls up at the house. When she sees the banner spelling out “WELCOME HOME” in wobbly puffy paint letters, Remus crumples into tears.
“They’re happy tears, I swear,” she says after she’s practically jumped by all three of them demanding to know if she’s okay. “I’m just so glad to be back.”
Sirius has snuck away, and her father is bound to be waiting for her with fists at the ready when she gets back, but right now her worries have shrunk to the size of Remus’s smile.
*
Hope barely hears the knock on the front door -- after all, it’s three in the morning and it’s been storming for hours. But she’s a chronic insomniac, so she finds herself padding down the stairs, heart in her throat. She’s imagining police bearing news of a death in the family, or maybe a serial killer; somehow, that would be less shocking than the waif of a girl she finds on the doorstep, drenched in rain and clothes plastered to her skin.
“Sirius?” she says, almost speechless.
She doesn’t respond, just flings her arms around Hope and her legs buckle, almost collapsing. Hope barely notices the wet of Sirius’s clothes seeping onto her own.
The next hour is a blur of mugs brimming with tea and firelight while rain batters down and Sirius shivers on the sofa, wrapped in as many blankets as they could dig out of the cupboard. Lyall is shaken awake, but the two of them make an executive decision to leave Remus asleep. She’ll be furious in the morning, but they can both recognise there is something deeply wrong here that requires utmost discretion.
They don’t get a word out of Sirius for the first hour, and they don’t push her; they sit on either side of her and hold her hands when she isn’t clutching her mug of tea so hard her knuckles turn white.
The fire has turned to embers when she finally speaks -- everything tumbles out at once like a dam has broken.
“I feel really stupid,” she starts. “I’m so sorry. I just didn’t know where else to go.”
“Sirius,” Lyall says. “You will always have a home with us.”
Hope smooths her hair back gently. “We love you, darling. But we need to know what happened.”
She squeezes their hands. “Uh. Well. It wasn’t anything so bad, really. It’s just, like, everything keeps building and building and I can’t take it anymore. They hate everything about me, they hate that I’ve got opinions and beliefs that they don’t, and I’m never good enough.” She gets quiet, and her voice is thick. “It was okay, you know, when I was younger. And I used to think that was because I was a better person back then. But I sort of realised, well, until I met you guys, I didn’t know what a home was supposed to look like. And now, I know what I’m missing.”
“Oh, Sirius.” Hope and Lyall both embrace her, and their eyes meet over the top of her head. Lyall looks about as devastated as Hope thinks she must, too.
“Sirius,” Lyall says. “Did they hurt you?”
“No,” she says, but it’s too quick, and neither of them miss her shifty look.
“Sirius,” Hope says, disbelief obvious in her voice.
“Well, a little, I guess,” she relents, with false bravado. “But I’m used to it, I swear, and it’s not that bad.”
“Show me.” Hope’s tone brooks no argument.
Sirius casts her a pleading glance, and Hope’s heart catches in her throat, but she knows she has to see, no matter how much she doesn’t want to.
She reluctantly pulls up her sleeve. Hope tastes blood where she's bitten through her lip, and Lyall abruptly gets up and walks out.
“Did I do something wrong?” Sirius says in a small voice, glancing after him.
“No, sweetheart, of course not,” Hope says faintly, but her eyes are fixed to Sirius’s forearm, where the words Toujours Pur are carved in deep, messy gashes.
“It’s not as bad as it looks, really,” Sirius says, and Hope is blinded by incandescent rage -- at her parents, of course, but also at herself. For so many years, she’s sat by and watched as this beautiful bright spark of a girl was hurt almost beyond repair.
“You are never going back to that place,” Hope says.
She can’t undo years of damage. But she can make sure it never happens again.
*
When Remus wakes up the next morning, there’s a pile of shaggy black hair and blankets on her favourite sofa. Underneath the blankets, there’s a pile of her best friend.
“Don’t wake her,” her mother says from the doorway. “She’s had a long night.”
“When did she get here?”
“Middle of the night.”
“Why? When’s she going home?”
“Not ever, if I can help it,” her mother says darkly. Remus knows that look, and she knows it means that her mother will get what she wants. She always does when it counts.
*
Sirius moves into the guest room next to Remus’s in the attic with nothing but the clothes she’s wearing. That night, she lies awake, staring at the ceiling and feeling like she might wake up from this perfect, impossible dream any second now, and she’ll be back in her old room with Regulus’s muffled snores from across the hall.
Remus joins her around midnight; she closes the door softly and flops wordlessly beside her onto the small bed.
Remus has been in and out of hospitals for forever, and Sirius realises this is the first time they’ve shared a bed in maybe three years. They’d done it countless times before, but this feels different, somehow, like the air between them is crackling with static electricity. When their hands brush, Sirius almost jumps. She shrugs it off as freshly washed bedsheets, or something vague and senseless like that, and wonders idly if Remus feels it too.
*
Remus is quickly consumed in schoolwork – she’s had tutor visits and home-schooled tests while she was sick, but she still feels impossibly far behind. It’s the summer before sophomore year, and she wants her first proper year of high school to go well.
Sirius can’t understand it; she’s spent the last few years in a fugue of loneliness and cafeteria lunches eaten in toilet stalls, and she thinks she hasn’t done any proper homework since the sixth grade. She manages to pass, still, which is good enough for her, if not for her parents. She’s soon bored in the quiet of the Lupin house -- her house -- with both parents working and Remus slaving away over her textbooks. When she realises distracting Remus will get her nowhere, she turns to other places for amusement.
Remus’s neighbourhood isn’t exactly highbrow, not like Grimmauld Place, anyway, and Sirius doesn’t have to go far to find what she’s looking for. She hands over a wad of cash sourced from dubious places and before long she’s in the woods behind her new home smoking weed. It’s not her first time, or her second, but she’s not exactly used to it still. She inhales until she’s euphoric, until it feels like the places where her parents’ violence has broken her are being mended, until there is one thought left in her mind as she stares at the blue sky: Remus.
*
The first day of sophomore year Hope makes them take pictures. They stand side by side like kindergarteners, smirking at each other. Sirius knows Remus well enough to sense her fear, though, and catches hold of her hand when they’re both in the backseat of the car.
Remus glances at her, smiles gratefully. “I love you,” she mouths, and even though they’ve been saying it to each other for years, something about it this time feels different.
*
The first day is a success, and Sirius marvels at how much faster time goes by when she has more human contact than murmured hellos to the cafeteria staff. Even though the girls Remus went to middle school with crowd around her with the kind of adulation usually only bestowed upon the dying, she doesn’t leave Sirius’s side all day. Remus’s newfound celebrity means Sirius finds herself at a lunch table with people who haven’t spared her a glance in years, any remaining trace of Remus’s nerves clearly vanished as she fields question after question.
Sirius is silent, content to watch Remus laugh and toss her hair in that perfect way she does.
*
The first time Remus tries weed, she and Sirius are under the bleachers after school. She took some convincing, golden child that she is, but Sirius has begun to realise the power her smirk has over people.
Remus coughs and wheezes, tears streaming down her face. “Why do you like this so much?” she splutters, and Sirius laughs.
“You’re just not doing it right. Here.” Sirius grabs for the joint, inhales for a long time, and then suddenly her lips are on Remus’s, forcing the second-hand smoke into her mouth.
It’s impulsive and it’s brash and it’s so impossibly right that Sirius feels like her heart might stop. Remus tastes of cinnamon and parchment, and she wonders at that for a second -- does the kid make out with her textbook -- but nothing else matters because her world has narrowed to heat and skin.
She draws back after what seems like a long time, afraid to look at Remus and gauge her reaction. “Was that…okay?” she mumbles, looking at the ground, and it’s so unlike Sirius to be unsure of herself that Remus laughs.
“You moron,” says Remus. Sirius looks up. “That was the greatest thing that’s ever happened to me.”
*
Sirius makes her a mixtape, and Remus thinks it might be the most romantic thing possible. It’s mostly the Velvet Underground, David Bowie, Mazzy Star, and Remus listens to it and feels more alive than she ever has before. It’s like Sirius’s kiss opened her eyes, and now she’s seeing the world in all its glorious dimension and colour.
“God, you are so cheesy,” Sirius says when she tells her, the two of them lying on Remus’s bed with their legs leaning against the wall. “You’re a cliché with legs.”
“Shut up!”
“Make me,” Sirius smirks.
Rising to the challenge, she reaches over and trails a finger down her face. Sirius is shocked into silence and Remus feels powerful in a way she’s never been before.
*
“How many girls have you been with?” Remus asks one night. They’re on a picnic blanket in the backyard, watching the stars with their legs entwined, sharing a joint. Hope and Lyall won’t be home tonight, so they can afford to be a little reckless.
Sirius sits up. “Why?”
“Just wondering.”
“I don’t know, a few? So what?” Sirius is being defensive, she knows, but she feels strangely blindsided by the question.
“It’s just,” Remus says quietly, “I’ve never been with anyone -- girls or boys. I don’t want to disappoint you.”
Sirius scoffs. “Disappoint me? God, Remus. I might’ve been with others, but they didn’t mean anything.”
“And I…do?”
“Obviously, idiot. You…you’re the only person who’s ever meant this much to me in my entire fucking life. You’re my favourite person ever.”
Remus looks taken aback, but a small smile blooms across her face. “Sirius?”
“Yeah?”
“You’re my favourite person ever, too, you know.”
“And now we’re back to cheesy clichés,” Sirius mutters, but when Remus looks over she’s beaming.
“We’re on a fucking picnic blanket getting stoned,” Remus says, laughing. “We’ve been a cliché this whole time.”
*
Sirius’s life has been far from easy. But she’s sitting at the Lupins’ battered kitchen table, revelling in the laughter of the people she loves, with the promise of Remus’s touch waiting for her upstairs, and she thinks that maybe, not everything has to be hard, or painful.
Maybe, sometimes, things do work out in the end.